1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic circuits, and in particular, to a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for simulating electronic circuits and caching certain properties in such a simulation to improve the simulation speed.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the bigger picture of Maker/DIY (Do It Yourself) and the new manufacturing revolution and disruption that AUTODESK™ is driving with the SPARK™ application (an open platform for building better three-dimensional printing software, hardware, materials, and services), the integration of custom mechanical designs and custom PCB (printed circuit board) designs provides a whole next level of innovation for the industry beyond the current 3D printing efforts of SPARK™.
Predictions for the future may include users printing objects that require electronics integration. As many users will not have experience with such electronics components, there exists a need for simulation of electronics in objects as well as systems to automatically assist users in that integration.
Simulating electronics is very computationally expensive and therefore slow. Such problems may be particularly true in the case of transient analysis, where a system of non-linear differential equations needs to be solved. Interacting with real time simulated electronics is therefore impossible in almost all interesting cases.
For this reason there are not many interactive electronics simulators out there. Most of these simulators simply run the old fashioned simulation and slowdown the perceived time in order to be able to cope with the heavy simulation. The interactive simulation is therefore viewed in slow-motion.
Other techniques may include a system of non-linear differential equations that is piecewise linearized or where calculation of device equations is cached. These techniques only result in marginal speedups that are not enough to build a real-time interactive simulator.
Further, some prior art simulators simplify the electronic circuit by disregarding any transient behavior, resulting in relatively fast simulations. Transient behavior, as used herein, refers to the transient response (e.g., of resistor-capacitor [RC] and resistor-inductor [RL] circuits. The transient response (also known as the natural response) in an RC or RL circuit is the way the circuit responds to energies stored in storage elements, such as capacitors and inductors. If a capacitor has energy stored within it, then that energy can be dissipated/absorbed by a resistor. How that energy is dissipated is the Transient Response. However, in many cases, it is the transient behavior that is interesting, so circuits that disregard transient behavior cannot be simulated correctly.
In view of the above, what is needed is an interactive electronic circuit simulator that considers transient behaviors in real-time.